CAIRO — A family reunification unit established by Al-Azhar's Fatwa Global Center to prevent divorce receives about 400 questions a week, most of them from women. The unit is still in its first month, so it is too early to tell whether it truly has a chance to foster familial harmony where it is lacking or whether it will merely serve to encourage women to remain married regardless of their situation.

The aim of the 28-member reunification unit, inaugurated April 19, is to “protect the Egyptian family from breaking up,” said Sheikh Osama al-Hadidy, the center's general coordinator. It is not to assist with divorce. Hadidy told Al-Monitor that the unit conducts research on the causes driving Egypt's rising divorce rate and develops strategies to overcome whatever is standing in the way of domestic bliss. It also offers telephone, email and face-to-face counseling to mediate between couples contemplating divorce.

There are three female preachers on the six-member team of counselors that deals with the public, the theory being that they are better-suited to understand women’s points of view and therefore more likely to have productive dialogues with them. As noted, most callers to the unit are women.

According to figures released in February by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), the divorce rate in Egypt has increased considerably. The report said the divorce rate increased 6.5% from December 2016 to December 2017, citing 14,000 divorces filed in December 2017 alone. The number of divorces filed for all of 2017 totaled 192,000.